


Unravel

by augusta_brie



Category: World Trigger
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-11
Updated: 2014-09-11
Packaged: 2018-02-17 01:00:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2291165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/augusta_brie/pseuds/augusta_brie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No-one ever promised them that working for Border would be easy.  Tachikawa and Arashiyama have found their own way of dealing with those particularly bad days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unravel

There are days, drawn thin, when Tachikawa thinks he is being pulled apart into a thousand different threads. Some unravel in a lazy loop, snagging slow on other people’s smiles and good intentions. Other threads roll out quicker, moss without a stone but somehow still fast and wayward in their downhill spiral. Each thread, undone, exposes parts of Tachikawa that he hides from the world.

They are the days that lead to nights, ink black, where he seeks out not the intellect of his team or the humour of Jin, but the quiet warmth offered by an unquestioning mouth and honest eyes. There are no phone calls, no words. Just an unravelling ball of blind blood and guts shaped into the man Tachikawa once thought he was. He slides down against the closed door of the empty apartment, and waits there in the cold for Arashiyama’s shift to end.

The morning after comes and Tachikawa leaves, less a memory now and more the man he might be.

And there are days, infused with heat, when the world around him pulls tight. There are breathless battles that thrum up his veins and thump through his heart, and he lives in each moment because he dies briefly in the next. It’s exhilarating. Captivating. Perfect. 

On those days there are nights, thick with mist and heavy with rain, when Tachikawa is sought out instead. He is woken by the rat-a-tat at his door, by desperate green eyes that shimmer wet. Arashiyama is all pale, drenched skin and yet another ruined uniform, one that is unable to contain the tremors that ripple up through his arms and catch like a pulse in his chest. Tachikawa thinks Arashiyama’s smile is cracking into a thousand pieces, falling apart even as Arashiyama clings helplessly to the shards. Some of those pieces are blunt, dulled and weathered by age. Others still slice through flesh and bone, ripping raw all that is good and leaving behind an exhausted husk of expectations and spent bullets. Tachikawa swallows them all, and pretends it somehow helps make Arashiyama whole. 

They never speak of those times in-between, when Tachikawa unravels too far and Arashiyama simply breaks. They live instead in the morning afters, because they’ve decided that the nights before don’t exist.

Arashiyama smiles when they pass each other at work, all sunshine and warmth and belonging to everyone all at once and no-one alone. Tachikawa waggles back with his fingers, his mouth stuffed full of chips that he stole from Jin earlier. Here, they are both but fleeting moments in each other’s day. They are always just fleeting moments in each other’s day.

__

__

_[Except-]_

It is exactly what they need it to be.


End file.
